One of the hot topics of marketing news in 2009 was the British Humanist Association’s controversial bus and outdoor advertising campaign. A riposte to a previous Christian Party campaign, the billboards and signs reading “There’s probably no God” attracted 392 complaints and the campaign was the sixth most complained about advertisement in the UK.

 The number of complaints may seem fairly unsurprising given the controversial nature of the statement, yet when a similar campaign was recently run by the Humanist Society of New Zealand, only one complaint was made.

Campaign reports that the complainant said the ads were offensive and made a mockery of the Christian faith – concerns which the NZ ASA acknowledged as severe but not in breach of their advertising code.

This single complaint is a marked contrast to the controversy seen in the UK, which was begun when the Christian Party launched 2009′s most complained about ad; a bus-side sign that read “There definitely is a God.” 1,204 complaints were made over the advert and the Humanist Association began its own ad campaign in direct response.

The New Zealand ads were almost exact copies of the British campaign, containing statements like “We are all atheists about most gods, some of just go one god further” above the central slogan. Unlike the British campaign the adverts are stationary, visible on three billboards in Auckland, three in Wellington and two in Christchurch.

“We originally raised money for a bus campaign and got twice the amount of money intended,” said the NZ humanist society’s president, Iain Middleton. He says that the society had to alter their plans when Stagecoach “decided not to run them because of complaints from the public and its own drivers”, made during the fund-raising activity after strong opposition from the New Zealand Christian Party.

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